Obesity Paradox Questioned In Recent Study
Obesity does not reduce the risk of mortality among individuals with incident cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to the findings of a recent study.1
The researchers analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, which included adults aged 50 years and older living in the United States. They used prevalent and incident disease cases, which included myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, stroke, and ischemic heart disease, to analyze the association between obesity and cardiovascular mortality.
_________________________________________________________________________________
RELATED CONTENT
New Study Questions “Obesity Paradox”
Obesity Paradox Called into Question
_________________________________________________________________________________
In prevalent disease models, the researchers observed a strong and significant obesity paradox that replicated results from prior studies. These models showed that the risk of death was 18% to 36% lower for individuals classified as obese class I compared with individuals who were normal weight.
However, incident disease models that used the same condition and the same dataset did not show any evidence of survival benefit.
“The loss of an obesity paradox when switching from prevalent to incident cases and pre-diagnosis weight in the same dataset suggests that prevalent models are likely biased by factors such as disease-related weight loss and selective survival," the researchers concluded.2
“Our findings do not offer support for reevaluating clinical and public health guidelines in pursuit of a potential obesity paradox.”1
—Melissa Weiss
Reference:
1) Chang VW, Langa KM, Weir D, Iwashyna TJ. The obesity paradox and incident cardiovascular disease: A population-based study [published online December 7, 2017]. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188636.
2) "Obesity paradox" not found when measuring new cases of cardiovascular disease [press release]. New York City, NY: New York University; December 7, 2017. https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/december/-obesity-paradox--not-found-when-measuring-new-cases-of-cardiova.html. Accessed December 8, 2017.